Trisha Sugarek's Blog, page 125

More nostalgia and trivia…

[image error]         Do you love meaningful trivia as much as I do? We grew up hearing this expression: “He read me the riot act.” “I really got the riot act read to me when I got home late.” “She read me the riot act when I bought the new car.” It means to get scolded, bawled out, or yelled at……. or does it?

No, not exactly. It comes from 17th century England and it was actually a Parliamentary ‘riot act’ that was read aloud at any unruly public gathering when things looked like they were getting out of hand.

The Riot Act (1714) was an Act of the Great Britain’s Parliament authorized local authorities to declare any group of twelve or more people to be unlawfully assembled, and thus have to disperse or face punitive action. The Act, came into force on 1 August 1715. It was repealed and replaced by the Criminal Law Act in 1967..

The Act created a mechanism for certain local officials to make a proclamation ordering the dispersal of any group of more than twelve people who were “unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together”. If the group failed to disperse within one hour, then anyone remaining gathered was guilty of a felony, without benefit of clergy and punishable by death.

The wording that had to be read out to the assembled gathering was as follows:

“Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God Save the King!’

……I love this!

 

 

Please join my Blog e-mail List!

Welcome to my Blog!  If you find yourself enjoying my posts, please take the time to go to my web site and on the right side of the  home page you can add your email address.

Every time I post a new blog you will get an e-mail.

your address will never be shared with third parties and is secure on this site.

 

A LETTER from SPAIN !!

One of the most rewarding parts of being a writer (on the Internet) is the responses I have gotten from all over the world.  India, Australia, Argentina, Great Britian, and now Spain.  Tanya is a working actor and has become interested in Billlie Holiday as a way to fine tune her musical career.

I thought my readers might enjoy her letter,

My name is Tanya R. and I’m an actress interested in training and developing my acting and singing abilities. I came to find your play and I was very lucky to find it (Scent of Magnolia)

I’ve read it and I have really enjoyed it. I hadn’t really gone in depth in Billie Holiday’s life or music. My only objective is to do some training with the play. I was born in Colombia, raised in both Colombia and England and presently live in Spain. I try to develop and work on the characters I play from what is the most difficult for me from a humanistic point of view. I try to work on a basis of affection, humbleness as a person, tenderness and respect with no judging, and I know that can be very very hard. I just think your play is an excellent opportunity to grow as an actress, and as a woman. I find your play very beautiful because though Billie Holiday’s life was so difficult, what attracts me so much is the way the character can be so close to you as you see/listen to her telling her story, so close.

There’s is a lot in it, told with affection and respect. Not only that. I am Colombian, and accent, background, my god, my profile is far from the character’s, which makes it more challenging to work on. I have had a look at your material, and I am very interested in reading all of it. The play with the 4 women seems so interesting to develop such different colours to the characters. Also I work a lot with my son’s friends in creations in video and theatre, they love acting so we do simple things in english as well. You have some material on short plays for young actors which I will be using no doubt.

I am very happy to hear from you and your work. I will let you know about my process, of course. As I said, my aim is to be a better actress and person and your play has the perfect ingredients for it.

A warm hello, Tanya

Researching Fairy Tales (1 of 3 in series)

    Back in May when my web consultant, Leon, and I were just cranking up the new improved site I posted the first of this series…..Now, three months later, I was concerned that my new readership might have missed this fascinating information on the history of fairy tales……so bear with me, here it is again!

I had so much fun research characters like Little Red Riding Hood (Rhonda Rider in my story).  Where she originated…way before Walt Disney was a twinkle in his Daddy’s eye.

While creating the third children’s book in my fabled forest, “Bertie, the Bookworm and the Bully Boys”  I wanted to pay special homage to the classical fairy tales, that we all grew up with, by having some of the characters appear in my story and chat briefly with my friends in the Fabled Forest.  As seen here in this illustration, Druscilla, Cinderella’s stepsister, has stumbled into the Fabled Forest’s clearing.

Variations of these classic stories, such as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, and many others, have been recorded throughout the world since the first century. The French tale of Cendrillon was written in France in 1697 by Charles Perrault. Later in the eighteenth century the Brothers Grimm in Germany adapted the tale again.

Little Red Riding Hood, also known as Little Red Cap, is a European fairy tale about a young girl and a very bad wolf. The story has been changed considerably in its history and subject to numerous modern adaptations and readings. The story was first published by Charles Perrault in Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697.[

This blogger was fascinated by these little known facts and shall continue with more in parts 2 and 3………..

A Good “beach read”

[image error]   You won’t be disappointed!  This is just a darn good story based on real women and real events.  And it opens a door on a subject that most of us women have never thought about….having to visit our man in prison.

Just as you are thinking that you know and like these three women, the story takes a dramatic turn with a shocking event.  Changing the women’s lives and friendships with each other forever.

There’s humor, family, love, suspense and sex.

FreshFiction.com said,  “This is an honest book, which means that it’s not always a happy book. It will touch your heart in ways that you wouldn’t expect and is a book well worth spending the time to read. You’ll come away with a new respect for women in this situation and a bit more understanding of why they continue supporting the men they love, no matter what.’

Click here to visit the on-line store where you can purchase this book!  Be sure, in your order to mention if you would like an autographed copy.

 

 

Writer’s short plays selling…..

My ‘SmallN’Short’ series of short plays has not been on amazon.com even a month and I have had sales already of these little books.

Even though I have my own on-line book store, I try to acquire as many sales channels as I can. Amazon.com is just one of them.

Until my new web site and visibility on the Internet improved so dramatically………this has always taken months if not years to achieve!!

New Web Site Launched for Writer!

Announcing the LAUNCH of my new and improved web site. A new and interactive look with an easy to use on-line store!  You can buy my scripts, fiction, children’s plays and books, and my poetry.

Please leave a comment and let me know how you like my new look!

 

Best regards,  Trish

 

PS: My web designer and consultant is: Leon Adato,AdatoSystems

“Must Read” rating for “Butterflies & Bullets”

Eric Jones, a reviewer on BookReview.com, just wrote a lovely piece on “Butterflies and Bullets”, my book of Poetry, Essays and Musings. Click here to read it on their site, or scroll down for a reprint.

 

Poetry 

Title: Butterflies & Bullets

Author: Trisha Sugarek

Rating:  Must Read!

Publisher: Trisha Sugarek

Reviewed by: Eric Jones

I knew Sugarek’s work in the past from her collection of short children’s plays, “Ten Minutes to Curtain”, which involve the complicated dynamics of growing up. Flannery O’Conner said that if you live through childhood then you have enough material to write forever, and Sugarek has been there and then some. Her short work for the stage has put her in the perfect position to transition from play to poetry with her new book, “Butterflies and Bullets”.

Even the title denotes the strange duality between innocence and loss, and that theme is prevalent throughout the work. Mostly in free form, Sugarek keeps everything in a minimalist range, lending focus to intimate moments like a man playing his Mandolin beside a fire, or the quiet landscape of the Serengeti just before rainfall. These truncated pieces of life feel like literary snapshots. These are Sugarek’s butterfly collection. Then, of course, there are the bullets.

The bullets are also set in free form, however they deal with much more happenings and are more narratively set. My favorite poem is one of these. “Hair Cut… Two Bits” chronicles the return of a barber from war-torn Europe in 1934 via a freighter into the Mississippi from the Gulf. The story, though scarcely a few pages, manages to convey the loss, struggle, and triumph of war given a single, near microscopic, experience. Not to mention that it’s all the more topical today, given the current mess in off the shore of New Orleans.

There are many that are like these, managing to say a lot with only a little. And given their accompanying illustrations by Lori Smaltz, which are printed small in keeping with the book’s minimalist structure, “Butterflies and Bullets” comes off splendidly. The collection feels complete and utterly whole, no piece of the pie excluded. Such close ups reveal that every place is connected. The ocean, if you look closely enough, looks just like rain on the blistering asphalt of your driveway. Shanty Irish curtains, at a certain scale, are indistinguishable from the sculpted wood of a Native American totem pole. This is the nature of Sugarek’s poetry, that when you pull back you see how different everything is, but when you put it under the microscope, a butterfly is really just a bullet with wings. 

 

Rain essays and more from this writer…

An excerpt from the "Rain Essays" and
part of a book of poetry.  

Rain on the Face of Africa

  The great Serengeti’s broad face lies in the African sun,

 dry, weathered, cracked, thirsty for the season’s tears

Storm clouds gather on her brow like an old lady’s curls

Promises, promising, a n empty promise

                                The rains are too late. The children of the Serengeti

                                    lie down on her dusty bosom, never to rise again

                             A desperate waiting fills the air

At last, a single drop of rain falls on the delicate skin of the vast plain

 then another and another, t here but for an instant, before it vanishes into the scorched earth

Another drop, then ten, then dozens, then hundreds

until the broad face that is the Serengeti smears through the downpour

Watering holes fill and breach, streams and rivers run like locomotives

Mysterious fish pop out of the mud

Sweet grasses leap up in the night

Yesterday the majestic canvas was devoid of life     

  Today, overflowing, a palette  gorged with color and life…

the cycle begins anew

                         The Serengeti awakes!                        

When I began writing this book, I discovered that I had been collecting little snippets of my own writing for over thirty years.  As something touched my soul I would write it down. For example the poem about New Orleans (Adieux my Beauty) was written on my lap in the car as we drove out of that grand old city for the last time, back in 1978.  How relevant it still is after the catastrophe called Katrina.

 

  

Family histories lost in the age of Computers

[image error]Since man formed his first vocabulary, family and tribal news was carried from tribe to tribe, village to village by a storyteller. They would be welcomed in each cave, hut, and council house as an honored guest and nights would be spent around the fire listening to the latest news from family members living afar. Famine, plenty, movement of wild herds, warring tribes, births, deaths, alliances, all were carried by the professional storyteller.  After a few days passed, the news had been told and the storyteller rested and refreshed, he would move to the next tribe or settlement.

While growning up in the mid-fifties my mother (certainly a modern day storyteller) would tell me the stories of her and eleven siblings growing up in the forests of Tumwater, Washington (state).  The story of my mother’s sister, Ivah, cutting off her eyebrows in retaliation.  When all the kids were down with seafood poisoning and a dairy cow wandered into the yard crying to be milked (milk being the remedy for stomache disorders).  Another of my mother’s sisters’ panties falling down around her ankles while dancing at her first dress-up dance.

  I believe that these oral histories, as told by the elders of our families will soon [if not already] be a thing of the past.  Whenever I have the opportunity, whether it’s teaching a class on writing and storytelling or giving a lecture on same, I relate how important it is for each of us to record our own family’s rich history.  When grandparents are gone, the stories are gone with them.  My family story, whose origins began in Ireland and France,  was great material for my writing.  One stage script and currently I am working on my second novel about my mother, as a young woman, in San Francisco.

 In this day of television, dvd’s, and computers with their games these stories, handed down from elder to child, will be lost forever.   Do YOU know some great stories that you were told as a child?

 It’s a great place to begin your writing career![image error]